Anyone
who has ever watched the monkeys and apes at a zoo, couldn’t help but
notice their resemblance to humans. By comparison, the bears in the
zoo are not nearly as similar to humans as are the apes. Still, bears
are warm-blooded mammals and thus are more similar to humans than are
cold-blooded reptiles like the alligators. Alligators, however, do have
legs and true lungs and thus are more similar to humans than are the
fish. But even fish have bony vertebrae and thus are more similar to
humans than are the insects. And even insects are made up of many specialized
cells and thus are more similar to humans than are the bacteria. Finally,
all living things, including bacteria, have basically the same type
of molecules that appear to be essential for life itself and share a
common genetic code mechanism for their reproduction.

Clearly
there is an underlying common theme to all of life. Inquisitive people
will naturally wonder why this is so. Until the time of Darwin, over
130 years ago, most scientists considered the underlying commonality
of all living animals to be evidence of the handiwork of their common
Creator. It seemed quite reasonable to these great pioneers who established
the foundations of nearly every branch of science, that God would use
the same underlying principles to design and create the various kinds
of animals. After all, even human designers, builders, and artists,
tend to manifest their distinctive approach in everything they create
and build.

There
are several possible reasons why certain animals are more similar to
one another than they are to others, permitting them to be arranged
into groups. Animals that live in a similar environment and eat similar
food would be expected to have structural and even chemical similarities.
Animals that live and move on land, for example, have a certain class
of similarities based on the restrictions imposed by the natural terrain
of our earth. Animals that live and swim in water have certain similarities
necessary for aquatic locomotion and feeding. Animals that fly in the
air have still other similarities dictated by the severe demands of
flight. In the same manner, man-made machines designed to serve a common
type of purpose share common features, despite their many differences.
Consider the various modes of transportation designed by man. Most vehicles
that run on land, from roller skates to freight trains, share a class
of similarities based on wheels. Vehicles that move on water, from a
canoe to a battle ship, share basic similarities based on flotation.
Vehicles that fly in the air, from hang gliders to the space shuttle,
have similarities that are essential to flight.

Today,
evolutionists insist that the underlying similarity of all animals,
including man, and our ability to arrange and classify them into groups,
is compelling evidence for their progressive evolution from a common
ancestor. They insist that there is simply no other thinkable explanation
for their similarities. Evolutionists argue further that the degree
of similarity between any two animals attests to their degree of evolutionary
“relatedness,” and thus how recently they separated from a
common ancestor. They are quite certain, for example, that the similarities
between apes and humans prove they evolved from a common ape-like ancestor
“only” 2 or 3 million years ago. By comparison, evolutionists
say we are far more distantly “related” to our insect “relatives.”
The Living World exhibit at the St. Louis Zoo at one time had a sign
by a dish of fruit flies that confidently declared: “humans and
flies had a common ancestor 630 million years ago.” This hypothetical
“common ancestor” is not identified because no one has the
slightest evidence of what it looked like, or even if it existed at
all!

Evolutionists do not feel compelled to prove their claim that similarity necessarily means common evolutionary ancestry—they assume it.

This
belief, that similarities between animals can only be understood in
terms of an evolutionary relationship, is the most fundamental axiom
of evolution—almost all arguments for evolution depend upon it. Evolutionists
do not feel compelled to prove their claim that similarity necessarily
means common evolutionary ancestry—they assume it. Indeed, evolutionists
never question or investigate whether evolution is true or
not, rather they ask which animal evolved into which, and their answer
is generally based on similarity! No scientist would ever succeed in
getting funding from major federal or private sources to investigate
if evolution has really occurred or not. The evolutionist Richard
Leaky approached the National Geographic Society to get funding to look
for the ape ancestors of man, not to investigate if man evolved from
apes. It is interesting to note that when the Society gave Leaky his
funds, he was warned: “If you find nothing you are never to come
begging at our door again.” With this motivation, Leaky soon found
40 specimens of the “human ancestor,” Australopithecus,
whose very name, by the way, means “Southern APE”! Most evolutionists
are dead certain that this very ape-like ape evolved into man because
of certain arguable similarities to man in its teeth and pelvic bones.
Perhaps you heard the story of the evolutionist who dug up a fossilized
fragment of an ape’s jaw and promptly declared it to be an ancestor
of man—he was so excited about the find he said, “I wouldn’t
have seen it if I hadn’t believed it.”

One
of the problems with the similarity = evolutionary ancestry axiom is
that evolutionists ignore it whenever it doesn’t fit their evolutionary
scenarios. There are many instances of remarkable similarities between
animals that evolutionists consider to be only distantly related. The
eye of the squid, for example, is strikingly similar to the human eye.
Sometimes almost the whole body and even the behavior of animals are
obviously similar and still evolutionists argue they are not closely
related! For example, many of the Australian marsupials have strikingly
similar counterparts to certain North American placental mammals. There
are both marsupial and placental mammal versions of mice, moles, rabbits,
wolves, and badgers. There is even evidence that there once were both
marsupial and placental saber-toothed tigers! Yet evolutionists consider
marsupials and placental mammals to be only distantly related because
their mechanism of reproduction is so different. Evolutionists believe
that the primitive ancestors of marsupial and placental mammals split
off from a hypothetical common ancestor about 120 million years ago,
long before there were mice, moles, rabbits, wolves, and badgers, and
have been evolving separately ever since. How then did both these separate
lines manage to come up with such similar animals?

Incredibly,
evolutionists explain away amazing similarities between animals they
consider to be only distantly related by simply invoking “convergent
evolution.” Convergent evolution is the unobserved and unexplained
process whereby two very different animals independently evolve
into two very similar animals by an incredible run of countless lucky
mutational coincidences extending over tens of millions of years! It
seems that some folks will believe almost anything, as long as it doesn’t
appear in the Bible.

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Answers in Genesis is an apologetics ministry, dedicated to helping Christians defend their faith and proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ effectively. We focus on providing answers to questions about the Bible—particularly the book of Genesis—regarding key issues such as creation, evolution, science, and the age of the earth.